One person can perform many roles. For example, an Accountable is often Responsible as well.

RACI has many critics and detractors. Most of the criticism reflects that organizations take the matrix too seriously. I like the point that Grumpy PM makes: the best use of RACI is identifying the various dysfunctions in the organization :-)

Define Responsibilities

No matter what the role breakdown is, roles have to be assigned responsibilities.

Generally:

A and R’s attend all project meetings.

R’s do most of the actual work.

C’s provide timely information, and attend meetings as invited.

I’s consume the communication.

If someone can’t be relied on to do any of the above, they are likely not involved in the project.

This let’s you identify if someone is a C (book meetings around them), or an I (don’t). Changing people’s role on a project is straightforward: they get a new letter.

In Software Development Teams

Accountability matrices raise eyebrows and roll eyes due to their origins in consulting and Deloitte-like environments.I still like them; the concepts are fairly lightweight and adaptable to help at a team level.

Things I find helpful about a matrix:

Calls out when someone will actually need to be engaged. ex. the Security person doesn’t need to be Consulted for a project kickoff, only once a specific feature gets planned.

Divides work without stepping on toes. ex. Product Manager or Engineering Manger can be Accountable for a project, in light of their shared ownership of a product. But you only need one.

Fun to make up your own acronyms.

My observation is that matrices that break up R into other roles (Supporting, Tasked, etc.) tend to be too specific, and categorize people that can’t help the project directly, instead throwing in names as a CYA exercise.

Step one is usually to add a bit of RACI to the “epic” or “feature” or “project” templates in your work management software (Jira, Rally, or whatever). Your project manager will thank you.

At some point early in my “management” career I realised nobody had sat me down and academically explained what managing people actually involved. I didn’t know what I was doing, other than being helpful-on-demand and organizing meetings. Being empathetic came naturally, but it felt like a failure when an employee wasn’t performing well. I didn’t always know what to do, and I didn’t really have the language to explain what I didn’t know.

Leading people was far less mystifying; I had been lead by good leaders, worked in groups where I was the leader, and “leadership” was a topic well-worn in TED talks and college papers. I had a framework for leadership in mind. But it wasn’t helping me convince someone that they shouldn’t quit after a boring project that under-utilised their skills.

Over time, many people helped me build a model of managing people, and it hinged on this idea that your job is to organize people’s lives through the employeelifecycle.

People get hired, become productive employees, and eventually leave. What they do in that lifecycle is up to you to manage. Tada, management.

Engagement and Performance

The lifecycle is organized into two important, somewhat binary, things about an employee:

Are they engaged, or not. Employee enagement is, as of writing, the best* predictor of employee success. This is something you can only get if you ask (with surveys, reviews, or 1-on-1’s).

Are they performing well, or aren’t they? This can be measured in many, controversial ways. As a manager you can generally answer the question “Is this person a high-performer, or not?”

The lifecycle looks like this:

The lifecycle of employees, and how to progess them through it. The green area is the desired landing place for all employees.

Recruitment

Every employee starts the same way: someone recruits them. Recruitment is a shared responsibility in the organization, typically involving a dedicated talent management department (ex. HR).

Provide a good experience for everyone involved, as applicants talk to their networks.

Development

Once an employee has been recruited, they are likely pretty engaged (unless recruitment didn’t go great). They are likely not performing at their version of “high level”. Developing an employee into a fully-functional member of the team is a managers responsibility.

Development is a continuous activity. An employee can highly function in one part of their role (ex. technical skills), but struggle with others (ex. leading a project, professionalism). This changes over time, as new skills are required, and the job changes.

Developing employees requires managers to:

Onboard, and support their early learning and concerns.

Coach the development of required competencies, both professional and personal.

Set goals and provide progressive feedback; help overcome blind spots and local maximums.

This is different than training; development is personally tailored, and goes beyond core skills.

Training

Employees find themselves in tough situations when they do not have the tools, or base skills required to perform parts of their job. It’s a manager’s responsibility to resolve those needs with training.

Expecting people to train at home, or in the case of my industry on hobby projects, is a tad demanding and unpredictable.

Exiting

Leaving the team (or the organization altogether) is an important moment in an employees lifecycle. Managing exits professionally, whether voluntary or involuntary, has a downstream effect on recruitment, and rest of the team’s engagement.

It doesn’t matter if the employee is let go, leaves voluntarily, stays with the company or not, a managers responsibilities are similar.

Prepare a replacement plan for every person on your team. Assume no replacement is coming.

Take part in the company “off-board”; administration can miss things that are team-specific.

Retention

If you recognize someone is un-engaged and underperforming, the “exit or retain” decision should follow quickly. Retaining means putting that person on a path to engagement (not necessarily high performance), and investing in their longer-term development.

This decision is difficult, and requires you to identify and address problems head on with the employee. That ruthlessness doesn’t always come naturally.

Preventing the “retain or exit” decision by setting up your team properly (including by hiring well) is the goal.

Retaining employees requires managers to:

Be clear and consistent about necessary behaviours and goals.

Foster a team identity that’s inclusive, honest, and aligned with business objectives.

Develop a personal “improvement plan”; the goals isn’t to make someone a rock-star, but set expectations on all those behaviours required to be successful.

Team-build; call out conflicts and have employees resolve them together. Friends need strife.

The pattern here is managers retain people by being clear about: the team, it’s goals, and people’s roles on the team.

Engagement

If you’ve taken management training since the late 1990’s, likely it was focused on engaging your employees. Engagement supersedes concepts like “job satisfaction” and “morale” as a predictor of employee success.

Research that precedes this terminology still stands. A formative, data-driven text on engagement is the (terribly named) First, Break all the Rules by the good people at Gallup.

Many activities required to engage high-performers are the same ones managers need to do in other parts of the lifecycle:

Ensure people have the right tools, equipment for the job.

Consistently communicate what is expected of the team, and the value of that work to the company.

Define plans for development and training.

Support development of team identity and friendships.

While retention requires setting up the team and roles, engagement focuses on the one-on-one relationship with the manager:

Know your employees as individuals, people with personal stories.

Find work that plays to their strengths and opinions; advocate for projects that match their skills.

Discuss their growth regularly

Plan strategies for getting promoted, compensation increases.

Recognize and celebrate successes; don’t wait for “announce-ables”, small wins that have creative output are great (ex. a well-written document that solved a client’s long-standing problem)

A lot like development, engagement is a continuous activity. Like with skills, employees can be really engaged with one aspect of their job, or their team, and dis-engaged with others. The challenge here is to develop someone to be well-rounded, and engaged with all aspects of the organizations work.

The Other Exit

The extreme end of the one-on-one relationship with your employee is identifying when to exit someone to bigger and better things, as perhaps they have outgrown the role you have for them. Encouraging an employee onto a better opportunity is an act of being a great manager.

Hopefully you’ve found the above lifecycle helpful! A good first step is to place your employees on the diagram above, and maybe your next one-on-one will prove insightful.